Ripe for Reassessment: Asia-Pacific Stability

Abstract

International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific. Edited by G. John Ikenberry, Michael Mastanduno. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. 578 pp., $64.50 cloth (ISBN: 0-231-12590-9). $24.50 paper (ISBN: 0-231-12591-7). In 1993, Aaron Friedberg of Princeton University published an important article in the journal International Security . Using insights from international relations (IR) theory and European history, Friedberg assessed the prospects for peace in the Asia-Pacific region. He noted that “what is unfolding in Asia is a race between the accelerating dynamics of multipolarity, which could increase the chances of conflict, and the growth of mitigating factors that should tend to dampen them and to improve the prospects for a continuing peace” (Friedberg 1993/94:27–28). Friedberg concluded that the region was “ripe for rivalry” because he believed that structural factors associated with the neorealist perspective were likely to be more influential in determining Asia's future than domestic and institutional factors associated with neoliberalism. He placed particular emphasis on the potentially destabilizing effects of Chinese economic growth “and the shared feelings of power and entitlement that tend to go with it” (Friedberg 1993/94:16). At the same time that Friedberg was constructing his pessimistic argument, the Clinton administration was developing the concepts of engagement and enlargement as the defining elements for US foreign policy. This strategy was anchored in classic liberal assumptions about the beneficent effects of democratization, economic interdependence, and multilateral institutions. The mitigation of conflict in the Asia-Pacific region was viewed by many policymakers and commentators as the acid test for the Clinton strategy. During the past decade, the differing perspectives reflected in the Friedberg article and in the logic of the enlargement and engagement strategy laid the groundwork for intense disagreements between the …